#lmwlchallenge day 3

Watch the video… an easy day. I didn’t get the email suggesting I put on a nice outfit and pour myself a nice cup of tea or glass of wine to watch it until later. Oh well.

Overall, there was nothing new in the video. Still, it doesn’t hurt to hear those things again and I’m sure some people have never heard them. Diets don’t work. Why? Because they usually require strange eating habits, deprivation, or annoying things like weighing and measuring and writing down all your food or counting points, etc. We tend to think we have to lose weight before living. For example, I’ll go dancing or find a relationship or get a better job after I lose weight. Being dissatisfied with our lives (until we lose weight and everything is perfect) encourages us to overeat. Eating makes us temporarily happy (and she didn’t mention it in this video but overeating certain things, like carbohydrates, actually increases certain brain chemicals that temporarily improve our mood).

So we should live more, get happy in our lives, relationships and jobs, and we will lose weight without even trying. She does have some other steps such as paying attention to our bodies and what we are hungry for when we are hungry. Eating without distraction and putting our forks down between bites so that we can determine when we are satisfied. Perhaps most importantly, to me at least, is stopping eating when we’re satisfied.

Ultimately, this 28 day challenge is either a jump start for her full program or an elaborate advertisement for her full program, depending on how you look at it. Or a way to start on your own plan of living more so that you’re happier and the weight just falls off.

I don’t mean to sound bitter – I knew this before we started. I think my bitterness stems more from the presentation which is geared towards more or less normal weight people who want to lose 20 or 30 pounds. Now, those feelings of dissatisfaction with life and unhappiness with their bodies is just as real and important for those women, but I was left feeling that what she was saying doesn’t apply to me. My issues or issues of the program? Not sure. It just felt like she was talking about younger women, thinner women, and women at a different place in their lives. Does what she say also apply to me? Some of it at least does.

Doing more that makes me happy, having more in my life, not waiting until I’m some kind of imaginary perfect person before doing the things I want – all important. Listening to my body, knowing when I’m really hungry and what I’m hungry for – also important. The other stuff? I’m not sure. I still plan to keep doing the challenges and to try to keep an open mind. Even going over things I already know I may learn something new, since I believe life keeps presenting us lessons until we actually learn them. Do I feel a need, or a desire, to do the girly thing with hair and makeup and clothes? No, not really. But is that because I don’t want to or because I think I don’t deserve to? Hard to say.

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6 thoughts on “#lmwlchallenge day 3”

“Doing more that makes me happy, having more in my life, not waiting until I’m some kind of imaginary perfect person before doing the things I want – all important” YES, absolutely because this IS life. None of us are perfect, whether it shows on the outside or not. I posted this quote on my Facebook (from my younger daughter’s blog):
Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.
—Eckhart Tolle

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” Alfred D Souza

But even though I believe that – I believe we have to live in the now. I still behave/think that I have to be different first. I know it’s not true. I know I have to enjoy myself now. Thinking about it now, I think that part of my problem is that I enjoy cooking and eating, I enjoy playing on the computer. I love to read. All of those, at least for now, are pretty solitary activities – or only involve others online – and none of them are active. But that’s who I am. I’m introverted, I mostly prefer solitary or small group activities, I suck at reaching out to others. But I also do like having friends and doing things with them out in the real world (just not in crowds). I used to enjoy hiking and things like that but I’m so limited physically now I don’t know how to integrate that back into my life. — You know, at least until I’m fit and healthy.

I found the video kind of annoying… and I skipped ahead until she actually got to the steps of the roadmap thing part, because the rambley repetition started to irritate me. I also didn’t get the email until after watching the video (in bed, in my pj’s, which was just fine by me).

I haven’t really been following the challenges very well thus far, though, so I counted today as a win. the first one, well, I don’t have the budget to buy fresh flowers. So instead I made myself a new piece of wall art. It brightened up the area I would have put flowers in, but it won’t die & need to be tossed out. The green smoothie was a spinach salad for me. My blender is on the fritz, and so I just put what I might’ve put in the smoothie into a salad instead. It was a pretty good salad!

I’m not sure how I’ll do with eating without distractions. I’ve just had a baby and I work full time, so I’ve been pumping milk at work during my breaks (including lunch time). I can’t really just not pump during lunch, because, well, I need to be able to feed my kid. It’s kind of important, although pretty distracting. So, I’ll eat without distraction, except lunch. And probably except dinner, because babies are distracting and waiting for a nap in order to eat is a recipe for starvation. But breakfast is just me & the kitchen, so there I’m good. Probably…

Saturday I’m hoping will be a good day, because I’d like to try to take a walk if my body is cooperating. A hike is a little over ambitious, but a walk I think I could do this week. We’ll see. If not, I’ll at least sit in my backyard with my baby and get some fresh air. Sunday is easy for me, because I usually glance at the sunset from my living room… so I’ll just do it with intention on Sunday!

Sounds to me that you made pretty reasonable substitutions. I like the idea of a new piece of art instead of the flowers. I haven’t got the flowers yet and honestly, they just don’t have that much meaning to me. What I really want are some more herb plants. And a spinach salad sounds better than a smoothie and just as healthful.

I think we have to be realistic. If a tornado were to blow through your dining room, you wouldn’t turn to it and say, “I’m sorry, I can’t be distracted right now.” And a baby is just a really cute tornado, right? Congratulations, by the way.

I’ve been dreading today’s challenge. I know I can do today but there’s no way I will do it long term. Been there, tried that – and I really hate it. But I believe in the principle so perhaps I can incorporate some of the ideas and find a way to be less distracted while eating.

I still haven’t come up with a way of “doing” the hike. I’m thinking about doing some patio clean up. That gets me outside and active at least. Sunset is 7:30 – I’m usually busy at that time but I will just have to make the time for it. But I don’t want to be watching it with the attitude that I can’t wait for it to be over.

I agree on the eating without distractions thing. For me it’s far easier to prepare food without too much distraction. I can be fully present in choosing my food & figuring out how much I’ll need. Then while eating it, if I’m distracted oh well. I’m trying to do that more, with everything, even snacks. If I don’t portion out a snack for myself, it’s easy to go overboard. Not that I’m being restrictive… if I finish & realize I need more, I portion out more… the point there is more about being aware of how much I’m eating rather than “accidentally” polishing off a bag of chips and regretting it. I might still eat a whole bag of chips, but it’ll at least be a conscious decision that I make beforehand and then I won’t be as likely to have regret over it.

And I think that’s a great substitute for a hike. I think for anything outdoorsy she has for a challenge, I’m just going to ask myself, “what can I do that gets me out into fresh air?” And whatever that looks like, I’ll do.

I also really like that what you’d rather get are herbs. I think that’s exactly what you should get then. I’ve been wanting to get a little planter in our kitchen for a few herbs, and if I’d thought of it, that’s exactly what I’d have done for that challenge!